The Directorate of the program "Ulyanovsk - UNESCO City of Literature" continues the new column "Book for the Summer". Recall that the guests of the column talk about their favorite books for summer reading. Today the book is recommended by the poet from Kharkov Vladislav Petrenko.

Vladislav Petrenko about the book “Creativity and Freedom. Articles, essays, notebooks of Albert Camus” (translated from French by S. Velikovsky, O. Grinberg, I. Kuznetsova, V. Milchina; M.: Raduga, 1990.- 608 p.)

Shards of thoughts stuffed into pockets: sometimes, trying to find something in them, you accidentally cut yourself, and then you can’t stop the bleeding for a long time. It is precisely such a scattering of fragments that lies in Camus's notebooks and diaries, through the optics of which we can look at the 20th century in the context of not only a global historical perspective, but also the history of one individual writer who is hard going through what is happening to the world.

All the same existential problems of choice that arise on an open palm, which the author holds out to the world, but is always ready to close it, to repulse any evil. It seems that in modern (cultural, political, and simply life) "realities", a person has lost all sorts of moral guidelines that would help him separate the "wheat from the chaff." In this sense, the diaries and notebooks of Camus are an opportunity to go through one single human life, in which many, many events of a historical scale are displayed. With all the pain that continues to be invisibly present in us and in our memory.

Not so long ago, an idea came to me: if I were a sculptor, and I was offered to make a sculpture dedicated to Europe (in this sense, Russia would also be present there), it would be a fountain from a ball of snakes, which, intertwining, release jets of water. And at the bottom he would leave a signature: “You should put your principles into something great. In small things, just mercy is enough. Albert Camus.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vladislav Petrenko (born in 1995) is a poet, author of the collection of poems “The Risk of Being” (2013), “Island” (2015), the art book “A Few Words About Us” (with Dmitry Mikhailov) (2019). Diploma winner of the festivals "Avalgard", "Focus", "Young Slobozhanshchina", "Chestnut House", literary awards Books-2010, im. Maselsky (2012), im. T. Shamray (2015), im. Grigory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko (2015), Smoloskyp (2015), Granoslov (2016), A4 (2019). Organizer of the projects "Islands" (2014), "Birth" (2015). Some works have been translated into Polish and English.